The Pumpkin Thief: A Chloe Boston Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

sign of Dad, and Blue and I couldn’t move it on our own. I started down the steps to wait for the chief, my dad or Mr. Jackman. Someone would show up eventually and tell me what was going on. I was too tired to sleuth any more.

Chapter 4

    The crime scene was being processed by the official detectives and I had been politely booted out. Again. But so had the chief, I noticed once I glanced back up the hill, so I didn’t feel so bad. Anyway, chasing monsters through a cornfield can really take it out of a girl.
    I made my way to my jack-o-lantern and sat on a bench that was far from clean, having had hordes of cider-swilling kids dribbling on it for hours. But I was far from clean myself after rolling around the corn field so a little more dirt on my shroud didn’t matter.
    I was looking sadly at my jack-o-lantern whose candles were guttering and wondered if I would have won had the discovery of the body not interrupted proceedings. The air smelled of baking pumpkin and I realized with a pang that I never got my pumpkin cake. Blue looked kind of depressed too. Maybe it was the cold light from the nearly full moon overpowering the sodium vapor streetlamps. I know the lamps are efficient but I’ve never cared for their eerie, dim light. Of course, maybe she was just tired after playing wolf in the cornfield. She hadn’t done that in a couple of years. I hoped her joints weren’t hurting.
    The chief joined me and my limpet—I mean my cousin, Althea, who had clearly been lingering in the park in hope of gathering gossip. She popped out from behind a tree when the chief appeared and plopped down beside me on the bench and made her usual insincere facial grimace in my direction. It was petty, but I hoped she got her princess dress covered in apple goo.
    Even when I am busy detecting, I try not to stick my nose out beyond reasonable limits. Althea, the gossip hound, doesn’t know the meaning of ‘reasonable’. Or ‘limits’, come to think of it.
    “Oh thank goodness you’re here. I’ve been so frightened out here all alone!” I shouldn’t have to tell you that that was Althea being breathless and clingy, not me. Nor was she addressing her comment to me, a mere female.
    Even if I had been mindless with terror, I never would have admitted it to the boss. Or anyone. Women who want to be taken seriously as detectives don’t do breathless and clingy. However, sometimes we roll our eyes to show disgust.
    When I remained silent, the chief took a stab at being reassuring while Althea fluttered her lashes. The chief is single. Althea can’t help herself. She wants to marry—preferably someone with money— and is trying to take that first step. Because I don’t like her, I am inclined to think that it isn’t a man she wants so much as that symbolic piece of crystallized carbon set in a fashionable platinum band that a man usually gives a woman when they are plighted. The chief was too tired for games though (and flirting around a corpse is just tacky) and I was just tired of Althea.
    “Go home and lock your door before someone cuts your head off,” I advised when the chief paused to draw breath. “Then you won’t have to be afraid anymore and I won’t worry so much about you, dear.” The ‘dear’ was gratuitous. She is always calling people ‘dear’ and ‘sweetie’ so they would excuse her impolite comments and nosy wheedling. Why do people let Althea get away with being bitchy when she adds an endearment? It seemed so stupid to me.
    Really, I needed to introduce her to Lardhead Gordon. It had occurred to me more than once that they would be perfect together. Dale Gordon was one of the officers who had hated my father and really hates me.
    Althea might have argued against my sound advice, but Dad and Mr. Jackman joined us at last and my fellow Lit Wit, after taking a quick read of the situation, did the honorable thing and offered to escort Althea home. I considered sticking my foot out as she walked by me,